XXVIII. THE GREATER SILA

A great project is afoot. As I understand it, a reservoir is being
created by damming up the valley of the Ampollina; the artificial lake
thus formed will be enlarged by the additional waters of the Arvo, which
are to be led into it by means of a tunnel, about three miles long,
passing underneath Monte Nero. The basin, they tell me, will be some ten
kilometres in length; the work will cost forty million francs, and will
be completed in a couple of years; it will supply the Ionian lowlands
with pure water and with power for electric and other industries.

And more than that. The lake is to revolutionize the Sila; to convert
these wildernesses into a fashionable watering-place. Enthusiasts
already see towns growing upon its shores–there are visions of gorgeous
hotels and flocks of summer visitors in elegant toilettes,
villa-residences, funicular railways up all the mountains, sailing
regattas, and motor-boat services. In the place of the desert there will
arise a “Lucerna di Calabria.”

A Calabrian Lucerne. H’m. ...

It remains to be seen whether, by the time the lake is completed, there
will be any water left to flow into it. For the catchment basins are
being so conscientiously cleared of their timber that the two rivers
cannot but suffer a great diminution in volume. By 1896 already, says
Marincola San Fioro, the destruction of woodlands in the Sila had
resulted in a notable lack of moisture. Ever since then the vandalism
has been pursued with a zeal worthy of a better cause. One trembles to
think what these regions will be like in fifty years; a treeless and
waterless tableland–worse than the glaring limestone deserts of the
Apennines in so far as they, at least, are diversified in contour.

So the healthfulness, beauty, and exchequer value of enormous tracts in
this country are being systematically impaired, day by day. Italy is
ready, said D’Azeglio, but where are the Italians?

Let us give the government credit for any number of good ideas. It
actually plants bare spaces; it has instituted a “Festa degli alberi"
akin to the American Arbour Day, whereby it is hoped, though scarcely
believed, that the whole of Italy will ultimately be replenished with
trees; it encourages schools of forestry, supplies plants free of cost
to all who ask for them, despatches commissions and prints reports.
Above all, it talks prodigiously and very much to the purpose.

But it omits to administer its own laws with becoming severity. A few
exemplary fines and imprisonments would have a more salutary effect than
the commissioning of a thousand inspectors whom nobody takes seriously,
and the printing of ten thousand reports which nobody reads.

With a single stroke of the pen the municipalities could put an end to
the worst form of forest extirpation–that on the hill-sides–by
forbidding access to such tracts and placing them under the “vincolo
forestale.” To denude slopes in the moist climate and deep soil of
England entails no risk; in this country it is the beginning of the end.
And herein lies the ineptitude of the Italian regulations, which entrust
the collective wisdom of rapacious farmers with measures of this kind,
taking no account of the destructively utilitarian character of the
native mind, of that canni-ness which overlooks a distant profit in its
eagerness to grasp the present–that beast avarice which Horace
recognized as the root of all evil. As if provisions like this of the
“vincolo forestale” were ever carried out! Peasants naturally prefer to
burn the wood in their own chimneys or to sell it; and if a landslide
then crashes down, wrecking houses and vineyards–let the government
compensate the victims!

An ounce of fact–

In one year alone (1903), and in the sole province of Cosenza wherein
San Giovanni lies, there were 156 landslides; they destroyed 1940
hectares of land, and their damage amounted to 432,738 francs. The two
other Calabrian provinces–Reggio and Catanzaro–doubtless also had
their full quota of these catastrophes, all due to mischievous
deforestation. So the bare rock is exposed, and every hope of planting
at an end.

Vox clamantis! The Normans, Anjou and Aragonese concerned themselves
with the proper administration of woodlands. Even the Spanish Viceroys,
that ineffable brood, issued rigorous enactments on the subject; while
the Bourbons (to give the devil his due) actually distinguished
themselves as conservators of forests. As to Napoleon–he was busy
enough, one would think, on this side of the Alps. Yet he found time to
frame wise regulations concerning trees which the present patriotic
parliament, during half a century of frenzied confabulation, has not yet
taken to heart.

How a great man will leave his mark on minutiae!

I passed through the basin of this future lake when, in accordance with
my project, I left San Giovanni to cross the remaining Sila in the
direction of Catanzaro. This getting up at 3.30 a.m., by the way, rather
upsets one’s daily routine; at breakfast time I already find myself
enquiring anxiously for dinner.

The Ampollina valley lies high; here, in the dewy grass, I enjoyed what
I well knew would be my last shiver for some time to come; then moved
for a few miles on the further bank of the rivulet along that driving
road which will soon be submerged under the waters of the lake, and
struck up a wooded glen called Barbarano. At its head lies the upland
Circilla.

There is no rock scenery worth mentioning in all this Sila country; no
waterfalls or other Alpine features. It is a venerable granitic
tableland, that has stood here while the proud Apennines were still
slumbering in the oozy bed of ocean–[Footnote: Nissen says that “no
landscape of Italy has lost so little of its original appearance in the
course of history as Calabria.” This may apply to the mountains; but the
lowlands have suffered hideous changes.] a region of gentle undulations,
the hill-tops covered with forest-growth, the valleys partly arable and
partly pasture. Were it not for the absence of heather with its peculiar
mauve tints, the traveller might well imagine himself in Scotland. There
is the same smiling alternation of woodland and meadow, the same huge
boulders of gneiss and granite which give a distinctive tone to the
landscape, the same exuberance of living waters. Water, indeed, is one
of the glories of the Sila–everywhere it bubbles forth in chill
rivulets among the stones and trickles down the hill-sides to join the
larger streams that wend their way to the forlorn and fever-stricken
coastlands of Magna Graecia. Often, as I refreshed myself at these icy
fountains, did I thank Providence for making the Sila of primitive rock,
and not of the thirsty Apennine limestone.

“Much water in the Sila,” an old shepherd once observed to me, “much
water! And little tobacco.”

One of the largest of these rivers is the Neto, the classic Neaithos
sung by Theocritus, which falls into the sea north of Cotrone; San
Giovanni overlooks its raging flood, and, with the help of a little
imagination here and there, its whole course can be traced from
eminences like that of Pettinascura. The very name of these
streams–Neto, Arvo, Lese, Ampollina–are redolent of pastoral life. All
of them are stocked with trout; they meander in their upper reaches
through valleys grazed by far-tinkling flocks of sheep and goats and
grey cattle–the experiment of acclimatizing Swiss cattle has proved a
failure, I know not why–and their banks are brilliant with blossoms.
Later on, in the autumn, the thistles begin to predominate–the finest
of them being a noble ground thistle of pale gold, of which they eat the
unopened bud; it is the counterpart of the silvery one of the Alps. The
air in these upper regions is keen. I remember, some years ago, that
during the last week of August a lump of snow, which a goat-boy produced
as his contribution to our luncheon, did not melt in the bright sunshine
on the summit of Monte Nero.

From whichever side one climbs out of the surrounding lowlands into the
Sila plateau, the same succession of trees is encountered. To the
warmest zone of olives, lemons and carobs succeeds that of the
chestnuts, some of them of gigantic dimensions and yielding a sure
though moderate return in fruit, others cut down periodically as coppice
for vine-props and scaffoldings. Large tracts of these old chestnut
groves are now doomed; a French society in Cosenza, so they tell me, is
buying them up for the extraction out of their bark of some chemical or
medicine. The vine still flourishes at this height, though dwarfed in
size; soon the oaks begin to dominate, and after that we enter into the
third and highest region cf the pines and beeches. Those accustomed to
the stony deserts of nearly all South European mountain districts will
find these woodlands intensely refreshing. Their inaccessibility has
proved their salvation–up to a short time ago.

Nearly all the cattle on the Sila, like the land itself, belongs to
large proprietors. These gentlemen are for the most part invisible; they
inhabit their palaces in the cities, and the very name of the Sila sends
a cold shudder through their bones; their revenues are collected from
the shepherds by agents who seem to do their work very conscientiously.
I once observed, in a hut, a small fragment of the skin of a newly
killed kid; the wolf had devoured the beast, and the shepherd was
keeping this corpus delicti to prove to his superior, the agent, that
he was innocent of the murder. There was something naive in his
honesty–as if a shepherd could not eat a kid as well as any wolf, and
keep a portion of its skin! The agent, no doubt, would hand it on to his
lord, by way of confirmation and verification. Another time I saw the
debris of a goat hanging from a tree; it was the wolf again; the boy had
attached these remains to the tree in order that all who passed that way
might be his witnesses, if necessary, that the animal had not been sold
underhand.

You may still find the legendary shepherds here–curly-haired
striplings, reclining sub tegmine fagi in the best Theocritean style,
and piping wondrous melodies to their flocks. These have generally come
up for the summer season from the Ionian lowlands. Or you may encounter
yet more primitive creatures, forest boys, clad in leather, with wild
eyes and matted locks, that take an elvish delight in misdirecting you.
These are the Lucanians of old. “They bring them up from childhood in
the woods among the shepherds,” says Justinus, “without servants, and
even without any clothes to cover them, or to lie upon, that from their
early years they may become inured to hardiness and frugality, and have
no intercourse with the city. They live upon game, and drink nothing but
water or milk.” But the majority of modern Sila shepherds are shrewd
fellows of middle age (many of them have been to America), who keep
strict business accounts for their masters of every ounce of cheese and
butter produced. The local cheese, which Cassiodorus praises in one of
his letters, is the cacciacavallo common all over South Italy; the
butter is of the kind which has been humorously, but quite wrongly,
described by various travellers.

Although the old wolves are shot and killed by spring guns and dynamite
while the young ones are caught alive in steel traps and other
appliances, their numbers are still formidable enough to perturb the
pastoral folks. One is therefore surprised to see what a poor breed of
dogs they keep; scraggy mongrels that run for their lives at the mere
sight of a wolf who can, and often does, bite them into two pieces with
one snap of his jaws. They tell me that there is a government reward for
every wolf killed, but it is seldom paid; whoever has the good fortune
to slay one of these beasts, carries the skin as proof of his prowess
from door to door, and receives a small present everywhere–half a
franc, or a cheese, or a glass of wine.

The goats show fight, and therefore the wolf prefers sheep. Shepherds
have told me that he comes up to them delicatamente, and then, fixing
his teeth in the wool of their necks, pulls them onward, caressing their
sides with his tail. The sheep are fascinated with his gentle manners,
and generally allow themselves to be led up to the spot he has selected
for their execution; the truth being that he is too lazy to carry them,
if he can possibly avoid it.

He will promptly kill his quarry and carry its carcase downhill on the
rare occasions when the flocks are grazing above his haunt; but if it is
an uphill walk, they must be good enough to use their own legs.
Incredible stories of his destructiveness are related.

Fortunately, human beings are seldom attacked, a dog or a pig being
generally forthcoming when the usual prey is not to be found. Yet not
long ago a sad affair occurred; a she-wolf attacked a small boy before
the eyes of his parents, who pursued him, powerless to help–the head
and arms had already been torn off before a shot from a neighbour
despatched the monster. Truly, “a great family displeasure,” as my
informant styled it. Milo of Croton, the famous athlete, is the most
renowned victim of these Sila wolves. Tradition has it that, relying on
his great strength, he tried to rend asunder a mighty log of wood which
closed, however, and caught his arms in its grip; thus helpless, he was
devoured alive by them.

By keeping to the left of Circilla, I might have skirted the forest of
Gariglione. This tract lies at about four and a half hours’ distance
from San Giovanni; I found it, some years ago, to be a region of real
“Urwald” or primary jungle; there was nothing like it, to my knowledge,
on this side of the Alps, nor yet in the Alps themselves; nothing of the
kind nearer than Russia. But the Russian jungles, apart from their
monotony of timber, foster feelings of sadness and gloom, whereas these
southern ones, as Hehn has well observed, are full of a luminous
beauty–their darkest recesses being enlivened by a sense of benignant
mystery. Gariglione was at that time a virgin forest, untouched by the
hand of man; a dusky ridge, visible from afar; an impenetrable tangle of
forest trees, chiefest among them being the “garigli” (Quercus cerris)
whence it derives its name, as well as thousands of pines and bearded
firs and all that hoary indigenous vegetation struggling out of the
moist soil wherein their progenitors had lain decaying time out of mind.
In these solitudes, if anywhere, one might still have found the
absent-minded luzard (lynx) of the veracious historian; or that squirrel
whose “calabrere” fur, I strongly suspect, came from Russia; or, at any
rate, the Mushroom-stone which shineth in the night. [Footnote: As a
matter of fact, the mushroom-stone is a well-known commodity, being
still collected and eaten, for example, at Santo Stefano in Aspramente.
Older travellers tell us that it used to be exported to Naples and kept
in the cellars of the best houses for the enjoyment of its
fruit–sometimes in lumps measuring two feet in diameter which, being
soaked in water, produced these edible fungi. A stone yielding food–a
miracle! It is a porous tufa adapted, presumably, for sheltering and
fecundating vegetable spores. A little pamphlet by Professor A. Trotter
("Flora Montana della Calabria”) gives some idea of the local plants and
contains a useful bibliography. A curious feature is the relative
abundance of boreal and Balkan-Oriental forms; another, the rapid spread
of Genista anglica, which is probably an importation.]

Well, I am glad my path to-day did not lead me to Gariglione, and so
destroy old memories of the place. For the domain, they tell me, has
been sold for 350,000 francs to a German company; its primeval silence
is now invaded by an army of 260 workmen, who have been cutting down the
timber as fast as they can. So vanishes another fair spot from earth!
And what is left of the Sila, once these forests are gone? Not even the
charm, such as it is, of Caithness. . . .

After Circilla comes the watershed that separates the Sila Grande from
the westerly regions of Sila Piccola. Thenceforward it was downhill
walking, at first through forest lands, then across verdant stretches,
bereft of timber and simmering in the sunshine. The peculiar character
of this country is soon revealed–ferociously cloven ravines, utterly
different from the Sila Grande.

With the improvidence of the true traveller I had consumed my stock of
provisions ere reaching the town of Taverna after a march of nine hours
or thereabouts. A place of this size and renown, I had argued, would
surely be able to provide a meal. But Taverna belies its name. The only
tavern discoverable was a composite hovel, half wine-shop, half
hen-house, whose proprietor, disturbed in his noonday nap, stoutly
refused to produce anything eatable. And there I stood in the blazing
sunshine, famished and un-befriended. Forthwith the strength melted out
of my bones; the prospect of walking to Catanzaro, so alluring with a
full stomach, faded out of the realm of possibility; and it seemed a
special dispensation of Providence when, at my lowest ebb of vitality, a
small carriage suddenly hove in sight.

“How much to Catanzaro?”

The owner eyed me critically, and then replied in English:

“You can pay twenty dollars.”

Twenty dollars–a hundred francs! But it is useless trying to bargain
with an americano (their time is too valuable).

“A dollar a mile?” I protested.

“That’s so.”

“You be damned.”

“Same to you, mister.” And he drove off.

Such bold defiance of fate never goes unrewarded. A two-wheeled cart
conveying some timber overtook me shortly afterwards on my way from the
inhospitable Taverna. For a small consideration I was enabled to pass
the burning hours of the afternoon in an improvised couch among its load
of boards, admiring the scenery and the engineering feats that have
carried a road through such difficult country, and thinking out some
further polite remarks to be addressed to my twenty-dollar friend, in
the event of our meeting at Catanzaro. . . .

One must have traversed the Sila in order to appreciate the manifold
charms of the mountain town–I have revelled in them since my arrival.
But it has one irremediable drawback: the sea lies at an inconvenient
distance. It takes forty-five minutes to reach the shore by means of two
railways in whose carriages the citizens descend after wild scrambles
for places, packed tight as sardines in the sweltering heat. Only a
genuine enthusiast will undertake the trip more than once. For the
Marina itself–at this season, at least–is an unappetizing spot; a
sordid agglomeration of houses, a few dirty fruit-stalls, ankle-deep
dust, swarms of flies. I prefer to sleep through the warm hours of the
day, and then take the air in that delightful public garden which, by
the way, has already become too small for the increasing population.

At its entrance stands the civic museum, entrusted, just now, to the
care of a quite remarkably ignorant and slatternly woman. It contains
two rooms, whose exhibits are smothered in dust and cobwebs; as
neglected, in short, as her own brats that sprawl about its floor. I
enquired whether she possessed no catalogue to show where the objects,
bearing no labels, had been found. A catalogue was unnecessary, she
said; she knew everything–everything!

And everything, apparently, hailed from “Stromboli.” The Tiriolo helmet,
the Greek vases, all the rest of the real and sham treasures of this
establishment: they were all discovered at Stromboli.

“Those coins–whence?”

“Stromboli!”

Noticing some neolithic celts similar to those I obtained at Vaccarizza,
I would gladly have learnt their place of origin. Promptly came the answer:

“Stromboli!”

“Nonsense, my good woman. I’ve been three times to Stromboli; it is an
island of black stones where the devil has a house, and such things are
not found there.” (Of course she meant Strangoli, the ancient Petelia.)

This vigorous assertion made her more circumspect. Thenceforward
everything was declared to come from the province–dalla provincia; it
was safer.

“That bad picture–whence?”

“Dalla provincia!”

“Have you really no catalogue?”

“I know everything.”

“And this broken statue–whence?”

“Dalla provincia!”

“But the province is large,” I objected.

“So it is. Large, and old.”

I have also revisited Tiriolo, once celebrated for the “Sepulchres of
the Giants” (Greek tombs) that were unearthed here, and latterly for a
certain more valuable antiquarian discovery. Not long ago it was a
considerable undertaking to reach this little place, but nowadays a
public motor-car whirls you up and down the ravines at an alarming pace
and will deposit you, within a few hours, at remote Cosenza, once an
enormous drive. It is the same all over modern Calabria. The diligence
service, for instance, that used to take fourteen hours from San
Giovanni to Cosenza has been replaced by motors that cover the distance
in four or five. One is glad to save time, but this new element of
mechanical hurry has produced a corresponding kind of traveller–a
machine-made creature, devoid of the humanity of the old; it has done
away with the personal note of conviviality that reigned in the
post-carriages. What jocund friendships were made, what songs and tales
applauded, during those interminable hours in the lumbering chaise!

You must choose Sunday for Tiriolo, on account of the girls, whose
pretty faces and costumes are worth coming any distance to see. A good
proportion of them have the fair hair which seems to have been
eliminated, in other parts of the country, through the action of malaria.

Viewed from Catanzaro, one of the hills of Tiriolo looks like a broken
volcanic crater. It is a limestone ridge, decked with those
characteristic flowers like Campanula fragilis which you will vainly
seek on the Sila. Out of the ruins of some massive old building they
have constructed, on the summit, a lonely weather-beaten fabric that
would touch the heart of Maeterlinck. They call it a seismological
station. I pity the people that have to depend for their warnings of
earthquakes upon the outfit of a place like this. I could see no signs
of life here; the windows were broken, the shutters decaying, an old
lightning-rod dangled disconsolately from the roof; it looked as
abandoned as any old tower in a tale. There is a noble view from this
point over both seas and into the riven complexities of Aspromonte, when
the peak is not veiled in mists, as it frequently is. For Tiriolo lies
on the watershed; there (to quote from a “Person of Quality “) “where
the Apennine is drawn into so narrow a point, that the rain-water which
descendeth from the ridge of some one house, falleth on the left in the
Terrene Sea, and on the right into the Adriatick. . . .”

My visits to the provincial museum have become scandalously frequent
during the last few days. I cannot keep away from the place. I go there
not to study the specimens but to converse with their keeper, the woman
who, in her quiet way, has cast a sort of charm over me. Our relations
are the whispered talk of the town; I am suspected of matrimonial
designs upon a poor widow with the ulterior object of appropriating the
cream of the relics under her care. Regardless of the perils of the
situation, I persevere; for the sake of her company I forswear the
manifold seductions of Catan-zaro. She is a noteworthy person, neither
vicious nor vulgar, but simply the dernier mot of incompetence. Her
dress, her looks, her children, her manners–they are all on an even
plane with her spiritual accomplishments; at no point does she sink, or
rise, beyond that level. They are not as common as they seem to be,
these harmoniously inefficient females.

Why has she got this job in a progressive town containing so many folks
who could do it creditably? Oh, that is simple enough! She needs it. On
the platform of the Reggio station (long before the earthquake) I once
counted five station-masters and forty-eight other railway officials,
swaggering about with a magnificent air of incapacity. What were they
doing? Nothing whatever. They were like this woman: they needed a job.

We are in a patriarchal country; work is pooled; it is given not to
those who can do it best, but to those who need it most–given, too, on
pretexts which sometimes strike one as inadequate, not to say recondite.
So the street-scavengering in a certain village has been entrusted to a
one-armed cripple, utterly unfit for the business–why? Because his
maternal grand-uncle is serving a long sentence in gaol. The poor family
must be helped! A brawny young fellow will be removed from a
landing-stage boat, and his place taken by some tottering old peasant
who has never handled an oar–why? The old man’s nephew has married
again; the family must be helped. A secretarial appointment was
specially created for an acquaintance of mine who could barely sign his
own name, for the obvious reason that his cousin’s sister was rheumatic.
One must help that family.

A postman whom I knew delivered the letters only once every three days,
alleging, as unanswerable argument in his defence, that his brother’s
wife had fifteen children.